Edna Lewis, chef and author, authority on Southern food

DECATUR, Georgia – Edna Lewis, the granddaughter of a slave who became a chef and the author of acclaimed cookbooks on traditional Southern cuisine, died on Monday last week.

She was 89. Nicholas Latimer, a spokesman for Lewis’ publisher, Alfred A Knopf, said she had been ill for years, but he didn’t have details.She co-wrote the 2003 book ‘The Gift of Southern Cooking’ with Scott Peacock, her longtime friend who was at her side when she died.After a long career, mostly in New York, Lewis had moved to the Atlanta area in 1992.Among her other books were ‘The Edna Lewis Cookbook’, 1972; ‘The Taste of Country Cooking’, 1976; and ‘In Pursuit of Flavour’, 1988.Lewis grew up in Virginia on her family’s farm, and she described in the books she would later write the dinners she made from things she harvested.”She wrote in wonderful longhand,” said Judith Jones, Lewis’ longtime editor.”We helped shape it a little.She had a natural gift, a sense of recall and immediacy when she wrote about the pleasures of cooking and hunting for wild things.”She came to New York before World War II and got into the restaurant business when a friend tasted her cooking.Her second book, ‘The Taste of Country Cooking’, established her as an authority on the subject.In the late 1980s and early ’90s, she was known for her work as chef and consultant at the landmark, century-old Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner.She said in 1989 that Southern food caught on because few people truly realise what it is.”They call it American food, but it’s really Southern food,” she said.”A lot of New Yorkers love it.”Lewis grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a small community settled by freed slaves.”I grew up on the farm….Everyone was self-sufficient,” she said in a 1990 Associated Press interview.She recalled growing and gathering corn from the garden and taking it to a mill to be ground.”So when we were shelling the corn, we knew it was going to be made into our cornmeal,” she said.”When we brought it home from the mill, we would taste it, to see what this corn tasted like that we grew and shucked and shelled ourselves.”In 2003, the James Beard Foundation gave Lewis a Cookbook Hall of Fame award for her body of work.The foundation is named for the famed journalist, cookbook author, chef and cooking teacher who died in 1985.- Nampa-APNicholas Latimer, a spokesman for Lewis’ publisher, Alfred A Knopf, said she had been ill for years, but he didn’t have details.She co-wrote the 2003 book ‘The Gift of Southern Cooking’ with Scott Peacock, her longtime friend who was at her side when she died.After a long career, mostly in New York, Lewis had moved to the Atlanta area in 1992.Among her other books were ‘The Edna Lewis Cookbook’, 1972; ‘The Taste of Country Cooking’, 1976; and ‘In Pursuit of Flavour’, 1988.Lewis grew up in Virginia on her family’s farm, and she described in the books she would later write the dinners she made from things she harvested.”She wrote in wonderful longhand,” said Judith Jones, Lewis’ longtime editor.”We helped shape it a little.She had a natural gift, a sense of recall and immediacy when she wrote about the pleasures of cooking and hunting for wild things.”She came to New York before World War II and got into the restaurant business when a friend tasted her cooking.Her second book, ‘The Taste of Country Cooking’, established her as an authority on the subject.In the late 1980s and early ’90s, she was known for her work as chef and consultant at the landmark, century-old Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner.She said in 1989 that Southern food caught on because few people truly realise what it is.”They call it American food, but it’s really Southern food,” she said.”A lot of New Yorkers love it.”Lewis grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a small community settled by freed slaves.”I grew up on the farm….Everyone was self-sufficient,” she said in a 1990 Associated Press interview.She recalled growing and gathering corn from the garden and taking it to a mill to be ground.”So when we were shelling the corn, we knew it was going to be made into our cornmeal,” she said.”When we brought it home from the mill, we would taste it, to see what this corn tasted like that we grew and shucked and shelled ourselves.”In 2003, the James Beard Foundation gave Lewis a Cookbook Hall of Fame award for her body of work.The foundation is named for the famed journalist, cookbook author, chef and cooking teacher who died in 1985.- Nampa-AP